Slashdot Mirror
Obesity Is Three Times As Deadly For Men Than Women, Says Study (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Telegraph: Researchers at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard universities found in the biggest ever study into weight and death that obesity is three times more deadly for men than women, and that being slightly overweight raises the risk of dying early. Telegraph reports: "Obese people can expect to lose three years of life while the average overweight person will die 12 months sooner than they would have if they were a healthy size. Usually fewer than one in five men will die before the age of 70, but that jumps to nearly one in three for the moderately obese, and eight in 10 for the morbidly obese. In contrast around one in 10 women can expect to die early, with obesity raising the risk to one in seven. While obesity raises the risk of early death by just three per cent for women, it is 10 per cent for men, more than three times as much. Around 61 per cent of adults are currently overweight or obese and the average weight of Britons has been steadily increasingly since the 1970s. In 1975 the average Briton had a BMI of 23, which is considered a healthy weight. But today that has risen to 27, with the average person now overweight. It means that since the 1970s, every person in Briton has roughly gained more than three pounds (1.5kg) per decade. Ten types of cancer are linked to excess weight which can also lead to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and a range of other health problems. Researchers compiled data from 10.6 million people who took part in 239 studies between 1970 and 2015, in 32 different countries. The study found an increased risk of premature death for people who were underweight, as well as for people classed as overweight." According to a study published in the Lancet in April, obese people now outnumber the underweight population for perhaps the first time in history.
When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity,
Before I reply further, I should note that I am NOT a major carnivore. I enjoy a good steak (sometimes a large one), but I actually only eat meat in maybe a couple meals each week. I've frequently gone several weeks without eating meat -- I just prefer to eat quality meat once in a while, rather than eating some industrial junk from a "tube" of hamburger every day.
So I have no strong reason to defend meat consumption, but I have been confronted with the vegetarian and vegan arguments from various people over the years, and I've spent a lot of time reading about the matter. For every study you cite, I could cite another that contradicts or qualifies the findings.
The problem with "modern nutritional science" is that it's trying to break down very complex systems and isolate a single variable within a huge set of possible human situations. Thus, there are literally hundreds of possible confounding factors that make the conclusions of your studies suspect.
Just for one major issue -- people who are vegetarian or vegan (at least in countries that don't have large religious populations that adhere to these) are disproportionately likely to have better lifestyles. They tend to be wealthier people who tend to exercise more and pay attention to what they eat and make deliberate choices not only to avoid meat but to avoid junk food in general, whereas the "default" person who eats meat in most modern societies probably also eats a lot of junk too.
along with the consumption of heavily processed foods.
And here you get at just one of the many possible confounding factors. Low fiber intake has also shown to be correlated with higher obesity, and that tends to be correlated with meat consumption. What if we did a study of people in the same socioeconomic status who shopped at similar supermarkets (often the pricier nicer ones with better quality stuff for the vegans) and controlled for the level of "processed food" (which itself isn't really the problem as much as additives like excess added sugar), level of fiber consumption, etc., etc.
If you actually compared "apples to apples" in terms of people and diets, just isolating meat consumption, would you see such an effect on obesity? I don't know, but I'd bet LOTS of money that if there is an effect, it's a LOT smaller than most of these studies claim. Maybe meat consumption is itself a contributing factor to obesity problems, but it's far from the only one... and I'm not convinced yet from studies that it's even a major one.